Ride Much?

So last night I went out for a ride... We met up a little earlier (6:30) with the original plan being to catch the sunset over at Siwash. The weather had turned by evening though and it was just grey and cloudy - no chance of seeing anything.

A few of us decided we didn't want to do the same old same old - we had a friend coming to meet up with us and she was riding along Hastings from over somewhere around Renfrew. Of course we couldn't let her ride alone through Crackton all by herself so Don, Mad Dog and I took off to go meet her... So Roundabout, Coal Harbour and then up Hastings to the Patricia... Let me tell you, the hill up Hastings from about Woodwards to the Astoria or so is a pretty good haul... Add Saturday night so you don't really want to stop and it becomes even more fun.

Met up with Melissa at the Pat and then headed down through Strathcona over to Science World and joined up with the SeaWall again. The four of us did the False Creek inside route around to Stanley Park and then did a reverse SeaWall around the park over to about 150 feet from Siwash where we met the half of the group that had done the 'normal' ride.

We weren't really in to heading back the way we came so we kept on keeping on - Charles and Serge joined up with us at that point and we headed around back to Coal Harbour. Found a good little spot to stop by Lion's Gate - there was a little bit of rain so a good little dry spot was pretty welcome.

Next stop after that was Crab Park (Which the map calls Portside Park - so if you're trying to play the at home version try checking for that instead). I figure it was around 10:30 or so then, not too late. Charles took the Seabus back to the Shore and Mad Dog took off from there leaving just me, Don and Melissa.

Don and I decided to make sure Melissa got home safe, the idea being we'd hop the SkyTrain from there and head home. We got Melissa home safe and then hit up some drive through... if you've got a couple of bikes it'll trip their little beeper so they think it's just a car at the drive through like normal. Good stuff. Found a spot to eat and then took off for the SkyTrain.

The idea was for Don to hop off at Columbia and I was going to keep heading back in to town. Unfortunately for me it hit the magic 1:00 AM and that was the end of inbound SkyTrain service. They very nicely asked me to get the hell off at New West station. Yay... Middle of nowhere! I hiked it up the hill and then rode the 7-11 trail under the train back through Burnaby - amazing how far that feels when it's 1:30 in the morning and you've got a nice light rain coming down.

Eventually got to Kingsway and rode the sidewalk back over to 28th Avenue for a sidestreet trek the rest of the way home... Finally rolled in at around 2:30AM for some much-needed rest. Awesome ride, I'm lovin' it. Best of all it was totally DIFFERENT! wOOt!